West Babylon, N.Y. - It took an extra day due to inclement weather over the weekend but the bracket is finally set for the East Coast Conference Baseball Championship. Tournament mainstays LIU Post and Bridgeport are joined by a pair of new faces in NYIT and Queens to compete for the league title and automatic bid into the NCAA Championship.
The tournament, hosted for the first time by NYIT at Angelo Lorenzo Memorial Field on their Old Westbury, N.Y. campus, begins on Thursday, May 9 and runs through Saturday, May 11.
LIU Post (33-14, 24-4 ECC) gets the top seed after winning their first Regular Season Championship since 2010. The Pioneers, who have now been to the ECC Championship in four out of the past five seasons, are looking to win the fourth ECC Championship in program history (2008, 2010, 2017).
The Pioneers will open the tournament against No. 4 Queens (25-22-1, 14-14 ECC). The Knights end a 20-year postseason drought with their first appearance in the ECC Championship since 1998. Queens has won one previous ECC Championship, coming in the aforementioned 1998 season.
The two schools will meet for the fifth time in less than a week after wrapping up the regular season against each other, as well. LIU Post took three of the four meetings, but Queens managed to win a matchup on Monday afternoon that kept their playoff hopes alive. The Knights ended up clinching the final spot in the tournament later Monday evening when Molloy knocked Mercy out of contention with a 1-0 victory.
NYIT (31-12, 21-7 ECC), the tournament host, will be the No. 2 seed. The Bears are making their first-ever ECC Championship in their second season competing in the ECC. Prior to joining the ECC, NYIT spent over two decades competing at the Division I level.
NYIT will take on No. 3 Bridgeport (19-27, 15-13 ECC), who has the longest streak of consecutive ECC Championship appearances, earning their ninth straight trip to the tournament this season. The Purple Knights are still in search of their first-ever ECC Championship, however, after a number of close calls. Five times in the past eight seasons Bridgeport has finished as the tournament runner-up.
NYIT took three-of-four regular season matchups between the two schools but Bridgeport's one win did come on the Bears' home turf.
The tournament will begin with the NYIT vs. Bridgeport matchup at 12:00 p.m. on Thursday afternoon. LIU Post and Queens will follow at 3:00 p.m.
All games during the championship will be broadcast live on the ECC Network website and the ECC Network app on Apple and Android mobile devices and also on Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV, and Roku OTT streaming devices. To read Twitter updates throughout the tournament, follow @ECCSports. To see video highlights from all games, follow @ECCSportsNet on Twitter. Tournament recaps, live stats, box scores and all other pertinent tournament information will also be available on www.eccsports.org at the tournament central web page.
2019 ECC Baseball Championship hosted by NYIT at Angelo Lorenzo Memorial Field - Old Westbury, N.Y.
Thursday, May 9
12:00 PM - No. 3 Bridgeport vs. No. 2 NYIT
3:00 PM - No. 4 Queens vs. No. 1 LIU Post
Friday, May 10
9:30 a.m. - Loser Game One vs. Loser Game Two
12:30 p.m. - Winner Game One vs. Winner Game Two
3:30 p.m. - Winner Game Three vs. Loser Game Four
Saturday, May 11
12:00 p.m. - Winner Game Four vs. Winner Game Five
If necessary - 30 minutes after the completion of Game Six
